Best Of BE Festival

After its 3rd year at Birmingham's AE Harris and mac venues, BE Festival goes national with three of its most celebrated shows performed by companies from Granada, Brussels, and Barcelona.

Solfatara by A Tres Bandes (Catalunia)

What happens when your fear comes round for dinner, and your deepest, darkest thoughts refuse to lie low? Solftara - a term for the volatile openings in volcanic terrain - similarly explores the phenomena that allows our insides to come to the surface. A Tres Bandes was founded three years ago by actors Albert Pérez Hidalgo, Miquel Segovia and Mónica Almirall in Barcelona.They attempt to discover everyday contradictions and share them with the audience.

L'Absent by La Compagnie du Geste qui Sauve (Belgium)

A woman lives alone, though haunted by an absence: that of the man who shared her life before death. He lurks in her life like a shadow, as she lives amidst the false comfort of objects he left behind. This non-verbal piece speaks volumes of our relationships between objects and loss. Formed during their studies at the Kleine Academie in Belgium, the company is inspired by using physical theatre as a universal language. L’Absent is their first project.

Fantasy No 10: The Beauty of Life by Vladimir Tzekov (Spain)

Nothing can be perceived to be truthful, until we accept it as fundamentally normal. An iconoclastic deconstruction of myth; these Granada based performers explore the intermediate space between individuals and their lack of identity.

'There is plenty to savour at the boundary-smashing BE FESTIVAL' (Lyn Gardner, The Guardian).